WASHINGTON - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) describing specific actions that federal agencies must take to comply with their obligation to engage in affirmative action in employment for individuals with disabilities. The NPRM is available in the Public Inspection portion of the Federal Register, and will be officially published February 24, 2016. Members of the public have 60 days from that date, April 25, 2016, to submit comments. EEOC has also published a question-and-answer document on the NPRM and a document providing background information and a summary of the NPRM.

Following on the tails of recent updates in New York and California’s equal pay laws, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California all have bills pending in their state legislatures that would seek to eliminate pay differentials on the basis of sex and other protected categories.

African American employees tend to receive more scrutiny from their bosses than their white colleagues, meaning that small mistakes are more likely to be caught, which over time leads to worse performance reviews and lower wages.

By Gillian B. White, The Atlantic

For decades, black parents have told their children that in order to succeed despite racial discrimination, they need to be “twice as good”: twice as smart, twice as dependable, twice as talented. This advice can be found in everything from literature to television shows, to day-to-day conversation. Now, a new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that when it comes to getting and keeping jobs, that notion might be more than just a platitude.

Religious discrimination claims in the US have doubled since 2001. Should businesses take more steps to ensure every employee feels valued?

Late last year, US food processing company Cargill fired 150 Muslim workers from its beef processing plant in Colorado after a dispute over prayer breaks. After facing protests about the layoffs, the company changed its rehire policy earlier this month, allowing the fired employees to reapply for their jobs. The incident points to a growing challenge in the American workplace: what companies can do to accommodate their employees’ faiths.

It may appear to outside observers that colleges and universities have made tremendous progress in regard to racial attitudes and practices over the past several decades. Certainly, their brochures and other public-relations materials would lead to this conclusion, as do the messages on their websites and social-media platforms. But the intensity and frequency of demonstrations conducted by students of color at campuses across the nation during the last few months do not reconcile with the sense of racial harmony that the institutions have attempted to convey. Further, faculty and administrators of color have offered their own testimonies of marginalization and exclusion that echo the students’ expressions of dissatisfaction.

Student loan debt and the campus sexual assault debate were two of the higher-education-related items on the agenda during the Senate education committee hearing on President Barack Obama’s nominee for secretary of education on Thursday afternoon.

Monday, February 22, 2016

2015 was an eventful year for government contractors as the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (“OFCCP”) finalized several key rules related to contractors’ relationships with employees and job applicants. With more rules expected to be finalized in 2016, the OFCCP will exercise increasing oversight over contractors’ activities. And since this is an election year, eyes will be on the presidential race and potential changes to the OFCCP’s agenda, depending on which candidate enters office in early 2017. This alert summarizes the key rules finalized in 2015, the ones we expect to see finalized in the final year of President Obama’s term, and the potential effects of a new administration on the regulatory agenda.

MILWAUKEE - Cessna Aircraft Company will pay $167,500 and furnish other relief to settle a disability discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.

Management Company Ignored Complaints of Attempted Rape and Threats of Deportation, Then Fired Employees for Complaining, Federal Agency Charged

DENVER - Vail Run Community Resort Association, Inc., a condominium complex in Vail, Colo., and its management company, Global Hospitality Resorts, Inc., will pay $1,020,000 as part of the settlement of a sexual harassment, national origin discrimination and retaliation lawsuit brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has long considered HIV infection to be a disability within the scope of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). From 1997 to 2014, the EEOC received in excess of 4,000 charges alleging ADA violations based on HIV status. In 2014, the EEOC resolved 197 charges and obtained over $800,000 for individuals who filed charges based on HIV status. The EEOC has also filed several lawsuits over the past few years against employers based on claims alleging failure to hire, discrimination and failure to accommodate individuals with HIV.

MIAMI - Vacation Resorts International (VRI), a provider of management and marketing services to resorts, condominiums, and timeshares, will pay $125,000 and furnish other relief to settle a sexual harassment and retaliation lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency announced today. EEOC charged that VRI violated federal law when it permitted a manager at the Fort Lauderdale Beach Resort (which VRI manages) to sexually harass a groundskeeping/housekeeping employee and then unlawfully fired her when she resisted and reported the harassment.

Unless you’ve been avoiding the national news the last several months, you already know the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has been in the cross hairs of the Department of Justice for alleged civil rights violations. Just this past Friday, February 5, 2016, the Department made a new civil rights claim against the CPD based on employment discrimination. The court complaint filed on Friday in the Northern District of Illinois, entitled United States v. City of Chicago, No. 1:16-cv-01969 (N.D.Ill. Feb. 5, 2016), alleges discrimination based on national origin. It claims the CPD discriminated againstapplicants not born in the United States through its residency requirement. Specifically, the Complaint alleged that a total of 47 applicants, who were otherwise qualified, were denied employment by CPD because they hadn’t lived in the United States for the required residency period. It claims that all 47 applicants were entitled to back pay, interest on lost wages and compensatory damages and requested that the city change its hiring policies removing the residency requirement as a “pass/fail” screening device.

The Obama Administration released a fiscal year 2017 budget today that makes crucial investments building on the Administration's work to advance educational equity and excellence, support teachers and school leaders, and promote college access, affordability and completion.

Turn on your television to any local station during daytime hours, and you’re sure to see a handful of commercials touting the amazing benefits of enrolling in for-profit colleges. These idyllic spots highlight flexible classes, accelerated programs, online classes available from the comfort of home, and more. Usually the information about the particular college is delivered by a once-uneducated person turned career success ― often a working dad, or single mom, whose kids are clearly proud of what the parent has accomplished. Obtaining a college education, particularly from the school mentioned, looks so easy to do.

Over the last six months, the public has watched as college students across the country have voiced their grievances, via sit-ins and protests, over higher education’s inattentiveness to their needs and concerns, particularly those of minority students. On the sidelines, spectators have been quick to assign blame, criticize, and even side with students — with little knowledge of the true origins of their unrest.

A pair of recent federal appeals court decisions aptly illustrate the importance of an effective harassment policy that prohibits same-sex harassment and a prompt and meaningful response to allegations of such behavior. In Smith v. Rock-Ten Services, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld a jury verdict that the employer failed to conduct a good faith investigation and to respond appropriately to complaints of same-sex harassment the jury found to be sufficiently pervasive and severe to support a harassment claim. In Burgess v. Dollar Tree Stores, Inc., the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit found that an employee's claims of a supervisor's vague sexual advance and threat to rip a cross-bearing necklace from the employee's neck did not demonstrate the necessary pervasiveness or severity of conduct to support a harassment claim.

A group of approximately 60 Black and Latino high school juniors from Uplift Hampton Preparatory School in Dallas toured the Texas A&M University’s College Station campus last week. They were subjected to racial slurs from white college students, who also shouted “Go back where you came from.”

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Underrepresented students' first-semester GPA may be a better predictor of whether they'll graduate college than their ACT score or their family's socioeconomic status, a new study found.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The death on Saturday of Antonin Scalia, the sharp-tongued justice who shaped constitutional debates for nearly 30 years, could end up shifting the Supreme Court’s ideological balance. But his absence is unlikely to affect the highly anticipated ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the pending legal challenge to race-conscious college-admissions policies. In short, the math still seems to favor the court’s conservative wing.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today released detailed breakdowns of the 89,385 charges of workplace discrimination that the agency received in fiscal year 2015. Retaliation charges increased by nearly 5 percent and continue to be the leading concern raised by workers across the country. Disability charges increased by 6 percent from last year and are the third largest category of charges filed.

A federal jury in Cincinnati Monday determined Chipotle Mexican Grill wrongfully terminated three former general managers on the basis of their genders and violated the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.

Their suit alleged they were wrongly terminated by a former manager who treated male general managers better than the three females, despite the women receiving similar or better performance evaluations or “audits.” What it also claimed was that the company violated the family leave act.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - Sappyann, Inc., which operates Yesterday's Pub & Grille restaurant in Sanford, N.C., violated federal law by discriminating against an employee when it refused to hire him because he is HIV-positive, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charged in a lawsuit filed today.

“First comes love, then comes marriage [or not – no judgment], then comes the baby in the baby carriage” and then – for nursing working mothers – comes expressing milk at the workplace. Nursing employees are currently afforded workplace protections under several major federal laws; plus, many state and local governments have expanded these federal protections, extending additional rights to nursing workers.

Advocacy Group Fired Employee Who Requested Off on His Sabbath, Federal Agency Charged

BALTIMORE - The National Federation of the Blind (NFB), the largest organization of blind and low-vision people in the United States, will pay $25,000 and furnish significant equitable relief to settle a federal religious discrimination lawsuit, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced today.

Wellesley College named Dr. Paula Johnson as its new president Thursday, making her the college’s first African-American leader.

Johnson is currently a professor at Harvard Medical School and is chief of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She’ll replace Kim Bottomly, who announced last April that she would step down after nine years as president of the private, women’s, liberal-arts university.

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice filed a civil rights lawsuit against Ferguson, Mo., on Wednesday, less than a day after the city rejected an agreement to overhaul its beleaguered criminal justice system and address allegations of widespread abuses by its police department.

Brown University introduced a plan on Monday aimed at doubling the number of faculty and graduate students who have been historically underrepresented by 2022 in hopes of improving on-campus diversity.

College loans haunt women for years longer than men, a new study shows.

By Natalie Kitroeff, Bloomberg

Student debt haunts women for years longer than it stays with men, research suggests. A report from the American Association of University Women shows that women take longer to pay off their education loans, which imposes a heavier burden on their finances years after they graduate. Black and Hispanic women in particular earn much less than other groups over time, and end up struggling the most to get rid of the debt that financed their college educations.

Fathers and childless women in academia are three times more likely to secure tenure-track positions than are working mothers.

By Sandra Waxman and Simone Ispa-Landa, U.S. News and World Report

Last month, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter introduced a suite of new Pentagon policies aimed at retaining female troops, especially those with young families. This follows on the heels of a bold new report issued at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting where 10 major Fortune-500 companies, including Twitter, Barclays and PricewaterhouseCoopers, committed to achieving full gender parity by 2020.

Our nation's universities should join in. Women comprise only 37.5 percent of tenured faculty and 22 percent of university presidents.

Are many academic job ads discriminatory to people with disabilities? That’s what David Perry, a professor of history at Dominican University, alleges in a new op-ed in Al Jazeera called “Disabled People Need Not Apply.” Perry argues that academe, despite its focus on inclusion, is a regular offender when it comes to job ads that exclude large groups of people. “I found around 60 current advertisements, including faculty, staff and administrative positions, at diverse types of universities,” Perry wrote of the analysis on which his piece was based. “At many institutions, every job posting receives one of these clauses, despite many positions being perfectly suited to individuals with all types of bodies, senses and minds.”

Baylor University is facing new criticism -- much of it from its own students and alumni -- over a statement by President Ken Starr expressing concern for victims of sexual violence, The Dallas Morning News reported. Many noted that the president released the statement on Super Bowl Sunday, a time when many wouldn't notice. Many say Baylor continues to avoid tough issues related to sexual assault, especially when allegations involve a star athlete. Many are speaking out using the Twitter hashtag #baylorscandal. Others held a vigil on campus Monday night (see photo at right).

Colleges should work harder to emphasize the earning power of certain degrees over others, new research suggests.

By Sarah Grant, Bloomberg

Research shows that the good jobs (secure, high-paying, non-manual labor) are going to people with a Bachelor's degree. It's clear that the job market values college graduates. But some degrees pay off in career success more than others, and that's hurting black college-educated Americans, research shows.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is soliciting public comments on two proposed policy changes that could have a significant impact on employers. The agency plans to require companies with 100 or more employees to include pay data as part of their Employer Information Report (EEO-1) form submissions, and issue enforcement guidance on unlawful retaliation.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Rental Pro, a miscellaneous equipment rental company located in Somerset, Ky., with locations in Hazard, London and Pikeville, Ky., will pay $37,000 to settle an age discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.

WASHINGTON — The odds of businesses owned by women winning a federal contract are about 21 percent lower than for otherwise similar companies, and years of effort to increase those chances have barely made an impact, according to a new report from the Commerce Department.

The University of California has fired just a handful of tenured professors since the late 1950s -- including one late last month. Details are still hazy, but those involved in the controversial case against a well-known professor of English at the Riverside campus are breaking their silence.

By
By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

In an extremely rare move, the University of California System Board of Regents last month fired a tenured faculty member -- over alleged violations of the university's sexual harassment and drug and alcohol use policies. While the exact details of the professor’s transgressions are confidential for now, the case has spilled over into the public sphere. Rob Latham, former professor of English at the system’s Riverside campus, says shared governance and his academic freedom have been violated and that he intends to sue, while some of his former colleagues are defending the university’s decision.

A prominent molecular biologist at the University of Chicago has resigned after a university recommendation that he be fired for violating the school’s sexual misconduct policy. His resignation comes amid calls for universities to be more transparent about sexual harassment in their science departments, where women account for only one-quarter of senior faculty jobs.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) recently made announcements that signal the government’s continued focus on ensuring that colleges and universities comply with Title IX's prohibition against sex discrimination, including sexual harassment and sexual assault.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — America’s most prominent public universities were founded to serve the people of their states, but they are enrolling record numbers of students from elsewhere to maximize tuition revenue as state support for higher education withers.

It seems like everyone is talking about the power of big data and how it is helping companies, governments, and organizations make better and more efficient decisions. But rarely do they mention that big data can actually perpetuate and exacerbate existing systems of racism, discrimination, and inequality.

Nearly three months after the University of Missouri’s top two officials resigned amid student protests, Michael Middleton leads an institution still wrestling with its path forward.

By Jack Stripling, The Chronicle of Higher Education

The University of Missouri remains deeply divided over racial issues that came to the fore three months ago, and the system’s new leader says that his efforts to move forward are complicated by anger and distrust that persist across the state.

Michael A. Middleton, a veteran civil-rights lawyer and retired deputy chancellor at Missouri’s Columbia campus, the flagship, was tapped in November to serve as the system’s interim president after Missouri’s two top officials resigned amid student protests.

President-elect of organization of officials who play key roles in Title IX cases accuses her predecessor of sexual misconduct.

By Josh Logue, Inside Higher Ed

The president-elect of the Association for Student Conduct Administration published an open letter on Twitter Wednesday evening, the first night of the organization’s annual conference, in which she says she was sexually assaulted by its former president-elect and that the ASCA “has not had my back” in the incident’s aftermath.

Social science suggests that stigmatized groups compete for social standing. And a new book that’s part qualitative study, part autobiography, suggests that that trend is evident in higher education among black academics.

Students with disabilities are lagging behind their able-bodied peers when it comes to high school graduation. As the U.S. is on track to reach 90 percent graduation rates by 2020, students with disabilities only graduate at a rate of 61.9 percent, according to the 2015 Building a Grad Nation Report released by the America’s Promise Alliance.

This outlook is grim, especially considering that students with disabilities account for approximately 13 percent of all public school students nationwide. But since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 25 years ago, some steps have been taken in an attempt to increase graduation rates.

SAN FRANCISCO — In an effort to diversify leadership in the upper ranks of the N.F.L., Commissioner Roger Goodell said Thursday that the league would now require that at least one woman be interviewed for any executive position openings in the league office.

Monday, February 1, 2016

Pay Ranges and Hours Worked to Be Included, Making It Easier to Spot Trends and Pay Discrimination

WASHINGTON --The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) today made public a proposed revision to the Employer Information Report (EEO-1) to include collecting pay data from employers, including federal contractors, with more than 100 employees. This new data will assist the agency in identifying possible pay discrimination and assist employers in promoting equal pay in their workplaces. The revised EEO-1 will be announced today in conjunction with the White House commemoration of the seventh anniversary of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Friday moved to require companies to report to the federal government what they pay employees by race, gender and ethnicity, part of his push to crack down on firms that pay women less for doing the same work as men.

Moving Company Fired Expectant Employee Based on Unfounded Belief That Job Was Unsafe for Her, Federal Agency Charged

DURHAM, N.C. - DeHaven's Transfer & Storage, Inc., a residential and commercial moving company, has agreed to pay $35,000 and provide significant relief to settle a pregnancy discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today. EEOC had charged in its lawsuit that DeHaven's violated federal law by discrimin­ating against a female employee when it fired her because she was pregnant.

On December 3, 2015, the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) published its report analyzing the history of gender diversity of U.S. corporate boards and provided recommendations for improving female board representation. The report indicates that, following current trends, it could take 10 years for women to comprise 30% of board positions and more than 40 years for representation of women to be equal to men. In 2014, when the data was collected for the report, women comprised approximately half of the U.S. workforce, but only held approximately 16% of board seats of S&P 1500 companies, which represented an 8% increase from 1997. The report identifies three key factors that help to explain why female representation on boards has only grown incrementally in recent years. First, rather than prioritizing diversity, boards tend to rely on personal networks to identify potential new candidates for election. Second, boards often choose candidates from a “traditional pipeline,” which includes former members of boards or those with CEO experience. To increase female candidacies for board positions, the report suggests that boards expand searches beyond the traditional pipeline, and perhaps set voluntary targets for diversity. Third, the report cites the relatively small number of vacant board seats that are open each year (only approximately 4% of board positions are filled by new directors each year).

University of Texas System Chancellor Bill McRaven argued in two separate public appearances this week that the state should consider scrapping its top 10 percent automatic admissions rule, saying it hurts the prestige of his flagship university.

British Prime Minister David Cameron says he will make universities disclose what proportion of poor and ethnic minority applicants they admit, in an attempt to end racial and class discrimination that "should shame our country and jolt us to action."

Researchers found that they bought into the trope that Asian Americans are more competent, and blacks and Latinos need to “work harder.”

Asian American students are “cold but competent.” Latinos and blacks “need to work harder to move up.”

At least, that’s how their white peers at the country’s elite colleges and universities see them, according to a new study by Baylor University researchers. The study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Freshmen, a survey of 898 participants from 27 prestigious American universities in which respondents rated their opinions of Asian, black, and Latino Americans based on work ethic, intelligence, and perseverance.

Florida State University will pay $950,000 to settle a federal Title IX lawsuit filed by a former student who said she had been raped by a star quarterback for the Seminoles, USA Today reports. The university also agreed to make a five-year commitment to prevention and training programs.

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